Desire <-> Craving In India I have learnt that Craving is one of the biggest hurdles in experiencing life. There is an important difference between desire and craving. Desire is not the problem. Desire is focused on a specific goal. Desire leaves, craving persists. Desire vanishes, when the goal is reached. Desire depends on a specific situation. Craving is unrealistic. It never ends, because try to fill the inner emptiness. You pump more and more energy into the craving, but you are never satisfied. It is an obsession.
Also needs are an expression of the inner emptiness, which are met by the different strategies.  There are different kinds of craving: 1. Craving for permanence: Everything you like should be permanent.  a. Relationships-> You fall in love with somebody, in one specific attitude, and that attitude shall stay forever. That is violence. b. constant identity-> The mind wants to be permanent. That is the reason why it has created the Ego.  c. States of higher consciousness-> In a state of higher consciousness you enjoy the absence of effort. And you try hard to keep that state of effortlessness. But effort is the antithese of mystical experiences. In a constantly changing universe there is no permanence. We are like the ant who tries to control the ocean. ME can´t be permanent. Experiences come and go - also mystical experiences.  The only permanent is the change - intellectually is that a home truth. But as an experience it is a breakthrough. This craving bonds much energy, because we persist the change. The suffering is not caused by the change, but by the persisting. Spirituality is the embrace of the change. 2. Craving for the recapture of beautiful moments: It does not make sense to try to repeat a situation or to compare it with another. A situation is like it is. Beautiful or not. Every situation is unique, because the universe does not duplicate. That is it´s beauty. 3. The craving of the spiritual seeker: We want to find something (e.g. enlightenment, wisdom etc.), but soon the seeking becomes more important than the goal. It is an end in itself. And the mind constantly creates new fundamental questions like "Who is God? Where did He come from?", "How did my ego came up?". The Knowledge shall fill an emptiness. The mind preserves itself with such questions. You are so attached by seeking and collecting knowledge, that it can feel like loosing your job when you finally have found the eternal. Ok, so what can we do to end the craving? NOTHING. You can only pay attention. Every try to end the craving is an new craving - only with another direction, a new object.  To end the craving is not in our hands. We are helpless. We need Divine Grace. Without bonding on the Divine there is no movement. I do not need to do anything except recognizing, that I can´t do anything. Then I can ask the Divine to deliver me from the craving. Step by step. To watch the craving: There is no need for judgements, that we crave. Craving is not wrong, only unproductive. It takes us away from freedom. It takes us to nowhere, but it needs very much energy on it´s way.  If you simply pay attention to your thoughts, I slowly get detached from them. It is helpful, simply to pay attention, how the effort of the mind has no goal. To watch, how scared the mind is to resign concepts - because the concepts keep it living.